It was straight, steep, regular, rhythmic Northshire rain, which, having struck its tempo, seemed intending to continue till the crack of doom.
The market square, its gutters rushing with water, was as empty as a hosed-out fish barrel. In the streets one met only a few housewives hastening between the shops, their brightly coloured plastic macs glistening under advanced umbrellas.
It was dark, too. The shops had on all the lights in their display windows, usually switched off during the day. Near St Margaret’s Church, where there were no shops worth speaking of, a murky gloom seemed to have settled among the buildings.
As for the pigeons… who knew where they went on a day like this? Probably they had long since congregated in Fuller’s mill, taking charge of one forgotten corner or another.
Gently, who could rarely be bothered with such things, had been obliged to accept the offer of a car.
It had stood most of the morning among the puddles in the mill yard, getting in the way of the lorries which came in for loading.
Then it had disappeared, not long before lunch, going back in the town direction. Fuller from his office and Blythely from his shop had both watched it departing — the one con espressione and the other with none at all.
And still it had rained and rained and rained; you couldn’t shift a yard without huddling into a raincoat and doing up every button.
The sky, a smoky wrack, seemed to rest on the gleaming rooftops. Some of the storm drains had got blocked with rubbish and were spreading aprons of water which they should have carried away.
Going in for lunch, grumpy and depressed, Gently had been obliged to change his shoes, socks, and trousers. He hated the rain, even of any kind, and this bout looked like being the limit.
‘It’s those atom bombs what’s doing it!’
He had exchanged a word or two with the maid who had taken away his discarded clothing to be dried. Logically speaking and according to the scientists… but had they really had such filthy weather in those halcyon days before the Second World War?
Before lunch he went into the bar and warmed himself with a hot rum. From the menu he chose the most solid-sounding dishes, beefsteak pudding followed by treacle tart and custard. Then he topped it all off by having a liqueur with his coffee, and had ordered an expensive cigar to be brought to him.
‘Have you got anything yet?’
There had been singularly little news from headquarters. He had phoned them twice while he had been at the mill.
‘There’s been two more reports in… both negative, I’m afraid.’
Could he have been wrong all along the line about that confounded bicycle?
His morning’s work had done nothing to clarify the situation. He could almost have predicted the result in advance. Fuller had an alibi which checked where it touched — he’d taken a van into Cambridge to pick up some spare parts. But Blythely! — well, he was running true to form. If it was a lie it was such a thin one that it almost compelled belief.
‘Don’t you remember my wife telling you we were going to the pictures?’
Likely, that, wasn’t it — after the emotional crisis Gently had provoked by his visit!
But the baker had stuck to the story, even elaborating it a little. And Mrs Blythely, whom Gently had cornered on her own, sullenly agreed that they had gone to the Ambassador.
‘Very well — describe the programme,’ Gently had challenged the pair of them.
Mrs Blythely had made a fair hand of it, her husband had been vaguer. And neither of them could remember meeting anyone they knew. Once again, by using sheer dead weight, as it were, the baker had shouldered Gently aside…
‘How about that bike — aren’t they through going over it yet?’
‘We’ve only just got Larkin’s prints back, and being in the river
…’
‘There’ll have been grease on the frame.’
‘He seems to have kept it washed down with petrol.’
‘That’s a damn silly thing to do! What about the lot who’re dragging the river?’
‘They rang up half an hour ago and we sent out some thermoses of hot soup.’
He hung up impatiently and dragged at his cigar, which tasted damp. All the leads he’d got his hands on seemed to be frittering themselves away. In the lunchtime paper had appeared a chaste paragraph about a body taken from the river, and if Roscoe hadn’t skipped already, then he would as soon as his eye fell on that.
Meanwhile this rain, boring down like the commencement of some fresh deluge…
‘Do you reckon these could be something, sir?’
Dutt, coming in on his lunch relief, found Gently still brooding by the phone. The cockney sergeant’s boots were squelching and his clothes sagged wetly, but nothing could quite upset the chirpiness of his manner.
‘Have you come into money, Dutt?’
It was a pad of fivers that was proffered to him.
‘I’ve only got it official, sir, pending what you thinks about it.’
‘Where did you pick this up?’
‘At the Central Garage, sir. This Blacker goes in there just now and buys himself a brand new motor scooter, and being as we’re so interested, I thought I’d take charge of the lolly.’
‘A motor scooter!’ Gently whistled. ‘That’s quite an item to be paying cash for.’
‘Yessir. And those notes is new ones — got the same letters, one or two of them.’
Always it seemed to come out of the clouds, but always you had had to work for it. This time he had been squandering Dutt on what seemed a pointless tailing stint, and now, when he was stuck for a move…
‘Get some dry clothes on and have your lunch, Dutt. I’ll take these round personally.’
‘Yessir. And do I go on tailing him?’
‘No — I’ve got a hunch that we’ve got what you were after!’
Abandoning the cigar, he set off on his tour of the banks. It wasn’t a long job in Lynton, where the principal branches were grouped together in streets near the market square. At the third one he made the contact he was looking for.
‘Four of these notes were paid out by us recently. We probably issued the others also, but we haven’t got a definite record.’
‘Who did you pay them to?’
‘Would you mind stepping into the manager’s office?’
The manager was a spare, gaunt-faced individual with cropped grey hair and tired-looking eyes. He seemed a little put out by Gently’s request.
‘I suppose it is absolutely essential, Inspector…?’
‘You are aware that I am investigating a homicide.’
‘At the same time, we try to guard the interests of our clients… publicity, in this case, could be cruelly damaging.’
‘Unless the party is implicated there should be no publicity.’
‘That’s out of the question! He’s our largest private depositor. After twenty years with us I think I can answer for his character. In Lynton his reputation is of the highest.’
‘The less he has to fear, then, from an enquiry of this sort.’
The manager frowned at the documents which lay on his blotter. Plainly, he would like to have given Gently a flat refusal. Homicide was a phrase to toy with, certainly, but when it came to annoying his largest private depositor…
‘The notes in question formed part of a substantial withdrawal. They were collected by our client in person at rather short notice, though of course we were happy to oblige.’
‘How much exactly?’
‘Ten thousand pounds.’
‘When were they collected?’
